All posts tagged solar

Call it savvy public relations or plain good investing, but Apple is becoming a solar-power developer in China.

News Thursday that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is partnering with SunPower., a major U.S. solar-panel maker, to build two solar power plants in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, highlights Apple’s attempts to offset its growing carbon footprint in China, where it is expanding at a rapid pace. Read More »

Between Beijing’s “crazy bad” air and the growth of a resource-hungry middle class in cities across the region, Asia is home to a host of wildly daunting environmental challenges. But according to Mark Clifford’s forthcoming book, “The Greening of Asia,” such challenges are also being tackled with considerable ingenuity across the continent. Read More »

A government official responsible for shaping economic policy suggested overcapacity would be a major target of reforms in China, saying the “core problem” with China’s economy is “excessive allocation of resources” and “unreasonable intervention” by local governments.

Local governments have promoted “blind investment,” which has led to severe overcapacity in sectors such as steel, cement, glass, shipbuilding, wind power and solar energy, said Yang Weimin, deputy director at the Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs. Read More »

China’s one-time solar champion is about to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

The move caps a dramatic reversal of fortune for Suntech Power Holdings Co., which raised $400 million in an initial public offering in 2005. Suntech’s IPO was the largest in the U.S. for a China-based company that year, and it was so successful that Suntech’s founder, Zhengrong Shi, was later asked to join a NYSE advisory committee. Read More »

The main business of Suntech Power Holdings Co. has already been involved in bankruptcy proceedings in China. Now some U.S. bondholders are seeking to force what was once the world’s largest supplier of solar panels into involuntary bankruptcy there.

The U.S. bondholders on Monday filed a petition in a New York court to force U.S.-traded Suntech into involuntary bankruptcy. Read More »

For years, public attention has focused on the choking air and contaminated water that plague China’s ever-expanding cities, but a series of recent cases have highlighted the spread of pollution outside of urban areas, now encompassing vast swaths of countryside, including the agricultural heartland; Rio Tinto is selling its majority stake in a copper-and-gold mine for $820 million to China Molybdenum, in its latest move to bolster its balance sheet amid a global slowdown in commodities demand; U.S. Vice President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Abe used visits to Singapore to press for rapid action to ease escalating tensions in disputed Asian waters where China is increasingly asserting territorial claims. Read More »

People in the U.S. and China view each other with increasing suspicion, and others around the world see the U.S. losing its place to China as the leading global power, a new poll shows; China announced tariffs on imports of raw materials from the U.S. and South Korea used to make solar panels; China’s efforts to deploy property taxes to tame the real-estate market have run into difficulties, showing the limits of a tool that supporters say could help stem rampant housing costs and official corruption.

China has raised its 2015 target for solar-electricity capacity, giving a shot in the arm to its solar companies, many of which are struggling due to industry overcapacity, slow global demand and overseas trade disputes. China’s cabinet said installed capacity for solar electricity would reach more than 35 gigawatts by 2015. Read More »

Solar-panel makers in China are open to raising prices and limiting exports to the EU as a way to avoid steep tariffs on solar-panel exports; luxury-goods companies are scrambling to attract China’s wealthiest shoppers as competition intensifies and sales slow, but what Chinese VIPs want can’t be found in a mall.

With a dollar now fetching ¥100, Japan’s reputation as a prohibitively expensive place to visit is changing, turbocharging a tourism industry seen as a growth engine for the maturing economy; China’s solar companies, already reeling from a collapse in product prices, will face an even tougher road ahead if the EU follows through with a plan to impose steep tariffs.

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